Master Farms, a mixed dairy and vegetable farm, has been in the south-east corner of Jersey since 1841 and Phil Le Maistre (left) is the seventh generation of the family to run it, you might know him from the seasonal events he and his family hold on the farm, like The Pumpkin Patch and now their Christmas Fest (you can find tickets on Eventbrite here). The Le Maistre’s farm consists of around 900 vergées (that’s just over 160 hectares and according to Google around 1261 football pitches!) of land where they grow a wide range of vegetable crops with the main one being the Jersey Royal potato and they also have a 400 head pedigree Jersey herd.
Can you tell us a bit more about the crops you grow and what we should be looking out for to add to our seasonal tables?
We grow a range of vegetables organically and conventionally for the local and export market. Currently in season are our cauliflowers, cabbages, squash and maincrop potatoes. We also grow Jersey Royals, Asparagus, Courgettes, Tomatoes. We also cant forget our amazing Jersey Cows who provide us with the tasty Jersey milk we all know and love!
Do you get to have any time off around the festive period?
The farm never stops and the cows always need looking after and milking, but yes we do. We have a great team and we all work together to ensure that everyone has their fair share of time off over the Christmas period. We are very lucky to have great guys and girls who without, we would never be able to do what we do.
What makes it onto the Le Maistre family dinner table for the big day?
A big Turkey, with as many Master Farms vegetables as possible! Usually accompanied by Didier and Christine’s Helio’s vegetables to make up for the ones we don’t grow!
Will we see any Jersey Royals appearing this festive season?
No, we believe they are a seasonal vegetable, personally you can’t beat roast potatoes with a festive dinner. We aim to start harvesting our Royals in early spring time.
We’ve loved seeing the seasonal events you host at the Farm, what inspires them?
Just taking on ideas we see from other farms around the world! The pumpkin event has mainly come from American farms where Halloween is celebrated nearly as much as Christmas! The Summer spectacular and Christmas event have just followed on from the success of The Pumpkin Patch.
And how have the public reacted to them?
It’s been brilliant having people on the farm and getting the chance to show them where their food comes from. With there being less and less farms on the island there are now less people associated with farming. It’s our job, I believe, as farmers to ensure people stay connected. However they can only do this if the opportunity is available to them, so that’s kind of how the idea of the farm events was born. Having children being able to stroke a baby calf or physically get their hands dirty picking up a Jersey Royal is a great thing to see! At one of our first pumpkin patches we had people asking us “what are those brown balls of mud on the floor”, they were potatoes and they were muddy due to the wet ground! They explained they had never seen potatoes not washed and in a packet! This highlights how important it is to show people food doesn’t come from a supermarket shelf, it’s grown in a field!
You guys are very active on social media, but can you tell us about your recently added Master Farms YouTube channel?
We started it to compliment the Facebook and Instagram pages. YouTube allows us to post longer videos and provide more detail about life on the farm which is our big aim to show people what goes on day to day. That being said it takes a lot longer than I first thought filming and editing the videos! Slowly picking up the hang of it and hopefully it will evolve and grow nicely into 2025. See some of the Master Farm content below;
@masterfarmsltd
